Most Americans oppose tax cut extension for wealthiest Americans

Republicans call extension of the Bush-era tax cuts their top priority in the lame duck Congress, and they insist that the midterm election gave them a mandate to freeze tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.

“The American people want us to stop all the looming tax hikes and to cut spending,” incoming House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday, “and that should be the priority of the reminding days that we have in this Congress.”

AP photo

Rep. John Boehner is emphatic in support of tax cuts for all Americans.

Trouble is, a new poll shows that Boehner may be mis-reading the election results. According to a new CBS poll, 53 percent of Americans want the Bush-era tax cuts extended only for households earning less than $250,000 per year.

Only 23 percent of Americans say that Congress should extend all of the Bush tax cuts  the adamant position of Republican lawmakers.

On the opposite extreme, 14 percent of Americans say the cuts should expire for all Americans, creating a tax increase for everyone.

According to the terms of the tax cuts pushed through Congress by Republicans in 2001, the lower rates are to expire on Dec. 31, 2010. GOP leaders had expected that Congress would be under intense public pressure to make the tax cuts permanent. But record-breaking federal deficits have convinced a large part of the American electorate that extended tax cuts would blast a giant hole in the federal budget.

Republicans argue that wealthy Americans and small businesses who pay income taxes at the highest marginal rate will stop hiring employees if their taxes increase on net income above $250,000.

During the current lame duck session, lawmakers are struggling to reach a compromise on this issue. According to the Treasury Department, the cost of making the cuts permanent for everyone is $3.7 trillion over a decade. The White House plan which would not extend the cuts on high earners would cost an estimated $3 trillion over ten years. The controversial deficit commission proposal that was released this week would save about $4 trillion, in contrast.

Thursday, the Democrats in House voted to extend the tax cuts for individuals earning below $200,000 and families with taxable incomes below $250,000, but it is unlikely that the bill will get the 60 votes it needs in order to break a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Seventy percent of Democrats want to extend the cuts only on incomes below $250,000. Among independents and Republicans, 47 percent agree.

Although relatively few want to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, responses vary depending on how the question is asked.

When asked whether the “tax cuts should only continue for households earning less than $250,000 a year or if the tax cuts should expire for everyone,” only 26 percent answer that they want to continue the tax cuts.

When asked whether the tax cuts should expire, kept, but with new limits on how much of wealthy Americans’ income is eligible for the lower rates, or keep the tax cuts for all Americans regardless of income,” 40 percent said that tax cuts should be prolonged for everyone.

38 Responses

The compromise of taxing those who make more than $1M should have been the proposal Obama went for.

And those who think that someone who makes $1M dollars and golfs most days of the weeks works harder than a single mom holding down 3 jobs making minimum wage clearly have no clue. Just because you’re wealthy DOESN’T necessarily mean you work hard.

twopondsnorth, no, let just STEAL money from every working stiff over a certain amount and hand it to the government. Oh well, except for politicians, their families, their friends, their Hollywood playmates and the corporatins they’re on the take from that is…

Why don’t you take a poll of everyone of welfare, etc, and ask if they want 60% of everything everyone else has or earns? Why don’t we borrow 800 trillion dollars from China and give it to the entitlement class so they’ll feel better about themselves?

Business owners do not lay off people because the taxes on their profits increase. Nor do they hire people when the taxes on their profits decrease. Businesses hire people when the work demand increases and lay off workers when business goes down. This BS argument that reducing taxes for the wealthiest is good for the whole country is a just a shameless attempt at rationalizing bald-faced greed. My husband and I make just a little over $100,000 total and we live a very comfortable wonderful life in Honolulu. Yet people with incomes 2, 3, 5, 10, 100 times what we make fight tooth and nail to keep every little cent in their grubby little paws. The elderly, the sick, and the poor be damned. Disgusting!